On Wednesday, Ted Cruz, the Republican senator and a former contender for the presidential nomination, took to the Senate floor to denounce world leaders who were whitewashing Castro’s decades of abuses. Cruz, whose family fled Castro’s Cuba, called out both Trudeau, and U.S. President Barack Obama as “leading the way” to “most fulsomely praise Fidel Castro’s legacy, while delicately averting their eyes from his less than savoury characteristics.”

Reading out Trudeau’s comments, after Castro’s death, praising Castro’s oratory skills, as well as those claims about health and education, Cruz called out to Trudeau: “Tell that to the people in the prisons. Tell that to the people who have been tortured and murdered by Fidel Castro.” Added Cruz. “Let there be no mistake. Fidel Castro was evil.”

Meanwhile in Cuba, tens of thousands of people have lined up to see Castro’s ashes travel along a more than 800-kilometre journey route across the country in a flag-draped cedar coffin through small towns and cities where his rebel army fought its way to power nearly 60 years ago.

The path retraces in reverse the path of the triumphant march of Castro and his rebels across the island to enter Havana on Jan. 1, 1959. Many waved flags and shouted “Long may he live!”

Others filmed the procession with cellphones, a luxury prohibited in Cuba until an ailing Castro gave up power in 2006 to his younger brother, Raul, who began a series of slow reforms.

The ashes arrived late Wednesday in the central city of Santa Clara, where they spent the night at a memorial to fellow revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, whose remains are interred in Santa Clara.

The second leg of the journey is to take the ashes to the eastern city of Camaguey. They will be interred Sunday in the far-eastern city of Santiago, ending a nine-day period of mourning that saw Cuba fall silent as thousands paid tribute to photographs of Fidel Castro and sign oaths of loyalty to his socialist, single-party system across the country on Monday and Tuesday.